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Pitz: The Role Of Sports In American Culture

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When you think of entertainment what do you first think of? Perhaps you said sports. Sports have long been a source of entertainment, competition, and even exercise. This idea of sport first entered this world over 3,500 years ago in ancient Mesoamerican. It was the center of culture, politics, and social lives for the whole civilization. It solved political problems or it was just a way to have fun. It has evolved and modernized into one of the most profitable and loved things in the world. We now have hundreds of sports that involve teams, rules, fans, and other things that originated from this one Mesoamerican ballgame called Pitz. When Americans think of sports, some of the first things that come to mind are the NBA, the NFL, along with …show more content…

A hacha was a representation of the human head (early ones might have actually been heads) with a handle attached and was used as a trophy for a winning player, a piece of ceremonial equipment or as a marker in the court itself. A palma was also most likely a trophy or element of ceremonial costume worn by ball players. They are frequently represented in stone and can take the form of arms, hands, a player or a fan-tailed bird. Other trophies for game winners include stone yokes (typically u-shaped to be worn around the waist in imitation of the protective waist gear worn by players) and hand stones, often elaborately carved. All of these trophies are frequently found in graves and are reminders of the link between the sport and the underworld in Mesoamerican mythology. As games often had a religious significance the captain of the losing team, or even sometimes the entire team, were sacrificed to the gods. Such scenes are depicted in the decorative sculpture on the courts themselves, perhaps most famously on the South ball court at El Tajín and at Chichén Itzá, where one relief panel shows two teams of seven players with one player having been decapitated. Another ominous indicator of the macabre turn that this sporting event could take is the presence of tzompantli (the skull racks where severed heads from sacrifices were displayed) rendered in stone carvings near the ball courts. The Classic Maya even invented a parallel game where captives, once defeated in the real game, were tied up and used as balls themselves and unceremoniously rolled down a flight of

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